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Cy Young

A Baseball Life

The first major biography of an American legend

Reed Browning

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Description

He was the winner of 511 major league baseball games, nearly a hundred more than any other pitcher. He threw three no-hitters, including the first perfect game in the new American League. He was among the original twelve players inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame, and his name is now attached to the game's most prestigious pitching award. Yet for all his accomplishments, Cy Young remains to most baseball fans a legendary but little known figure.

In this book, Reed Browning re-creates the life of Denton True "Cyclone" Young and places his story in the context of a rapidly changing turn-of-the-century America. Born in rural Ohio, the son of a Civil War veteran, Young learned his trade at a time when only underhand pitching was permitted. When he began his professional career in 1890, pitchers wore no gloves and stood five feet closer to the batter than they do today. By the time he retired in 1911, the game of baseball had evolved into its modern form and claimed unquestioned status as America's "national pastime."

As Browning shows, Young's extraordinary mastery of his craft owed much to his ability to adapt to the changing nature of the game. Endowed with an exceptional fastball, he gradually developed a wide array of deliveries and pitches—all of which he could throw with astonishing control. Yet his success can also be attributed, at least in part, to the rustic values of loyalty, hard work, and fair play that he embraced and embodied, and for which he became renowned among baseball fans of his day.

Reviews

"The most in-depth study to date of one of baseball's greatest pitchers, a name known by all, but a man known to very few. Young's career spanned an incredibly long period in baseball history, one in which the game was transformed several times. Browning's biography illuminates those changes. I think it will be the authoritative book on Cy Young."—Warren Goldstein, author of Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball

"Each year the top pitchers in both leagues are honored with the Cy Young Award, but how many of today's fans really know much about the winningest hurler of them all? Browning digs deep to uncover the real story behind this pitching legend, whose innovations were essential to baseball's growth in the 19th and early 20th centuries."—USA Today Baseball Weekly

"This will be the standard biography of Denton True Young for a long time to come."—Spitball Magazine

"A carefully researched book written in a straightforward reporter's style that should satisfy baseball buffs."—(Cleveland) Plain Dealer

"Cy Young beat out nine other nominated books to win the coveted bronze Casey plaque. . . . This is an important biography which gets an A-plus for its originality and coverage of Cy Young's entire life. . . . It is difficult to imagine a more definitive biography of Young ever being done."—Judge Paul Herbert, Casey Award selection committee

"Browning has filled a void in baseball's biographies of its greats in authoring a 'no stone unturned' book about Young. . . . A superb Young reader, documentary, [and] biography."—Grandstand Baseball Annual

"Cy Young, baseball's greatest pitcher, owns one record that will never be broken: 511 career victories. Unfortunately, Young didn't also possess the larger-than-life personality of a Babe Ruth or a Ty Cobb (whose signature records have both been surpassed). Consequently, his life has largely been forgotten. History professor Browning hopes to revive Young with this chronicle of a career that straddled the centuries and saw the birth of the modern game. The problem is that his subject won't cooperate. What few pieces of correspondence the semiliterate pitcher left behind "are almost silent about his thoughts." In addition, "Young was a quiet man" with an "aversion to interviews" and a reluctance to talk about himself. That's why, from a baseball writer's point of view, "[he] was not good copy"; from a reader's point of view, the same holds true. Young's private life must remain undecipherableAthe simple life of a humble man. As for his career, Browning tries his spirited best to bring countless games to life, but with little incisive commentary from Young himself, Browning's efforts are frustrated, and the book eventually grows wearisome. Nonetheless, the author has also packed in many colorful anecdotes: for example, on the evolution of the pitcher's mound, the origins of the American League (especially the Red Sox), the history of baseball in Cleveland and the first World Series. Ultimately, even if the book doesn't post a W, it isn't a bad game to watch."—Publishers Weekly